Archive for December, 2007

Batch printing solutions are a priority item on the Lab’s list of future functionality advances. As much as possible, it makes sense to use Adobe’s super popular Reader software for a couple of reasons.

1. Everyone has it

2. Reader/Acrobat can print really well

So in thinking about the workflows our customers are going to use, PDF is without question the best format for jobs that a reasonable person would actually sit down and print, let’s say that limit is a 5000 pages. Once the print job is larger than a 5000 pages it makes sense to send it to a dedicated print shop, who can handle that job more efficiently.

The new mini-site for Nextpoint should be up and running by the end of the day. This marketing-focused site, which will take over the domain www.nextpoint.com, will provide an easy way for prospective clients to learn more about Nextpoint products and request a demo. Although clients will still be able to sign into the Nextpoint application at this domain, the normal application address will be moved to https://secure.nextpoint.com; this may affect page bookmarks. Kudos to Michael for the slick site design.

The Lab is continually evaluating Nextpoint’s functionality and looking to see what extra features would make it an even more killer application. Many of these ideas come directly from client feedback in sales meetings. Here are the big picture things they are currently working through.

Upload speed: Many of our current and prospective clients are interested in putting a ton of documents into Nextpoint. In anticipation of that, the Lab is gearing up to increase our server capacity. The new system will have the capacity to process 500 fully searchable pages per minute—that’s 5x the speed of our previous servers!

Hosting native files: The Lab is working to give Nextpoint the ability to host files in their original format, rather than as scanned images. Right now, law firms have to pay through the nose to have native file formats like emails, Word and Excel files converted into images. We’re planning to short circuit that process by enabling them to upload native files into Nextpoint directly. In addition to saving time and money, native files are much smaller than images, upload much faster, and return perfect search results.

“Work Product”Section: Nextpoint will be adding a “Work Product” section where attorneys can share documents they have created themselves in the daily trial process, opening the doors for better inter-office communication. As in the other tabs, the documents will be fully searchable.

Nextpoint Reorganization: In the coming months, the brand names of the features within Nextpoint—Command Center, Scout, and Theater—will be dropped in an effort to make the user experience more intuitive. The sections will have more intuitive names like “Extranet,” “Documents,” “Depositions,” etc.

Cross-linking Evidence: The Lab will be adding a feature to Nextpoint that will allow users to cross-reference exhibits in a deposition with the click of a button. Users will also have click access to a complete list of all exhibits mentioned in each deposition.

Deposition video: The Lab plans to build in a video function so that attorneys can review deposition clips on Nextpoint.

Currently in Nextpoint you can create custom tags to group certain types of evidence together. For example, if you have a bunch of exhibits and you want to link them to a particular witness, you can create a custom tag field called “witness.” Later if you are going through a bunch of documents and want to assign them to a witness called “Smith,” you can do so by typing “Smith” in that new tag field. That’s pretty cool stuff. But coming soon you will be able to search for those “Smith” documents from the main search page by simply typing in the search bar

“witness: Smith”

The results will pull up only the documents that you have assigned to “Smith” in the witness tag field.